Photo courtesy RecLink

interview by Simon Sellars

‘RecLink: Positive High’ was originally published in Subterrain magazine #1, December 2005.

RecLink was established in Melbourne in 1990 to help people from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds enjoy sport and recreation on a therapeutic level, with knock-on benefits like improved health and well being. RecLink involves a network of agencies (including Ozanam Community) who work with people experiencing homelessness, drug-and-alcohol issues, disability, mental-health issues, juvenile justice and social and economic isolation. Ultimately, RecLink aims to help such people find their way back into the mainstream community, using sport and recreation as the tools. I spoke with Peter Cullen, RecLink Australia’s Development Manager, about all this and more.

How did Rec Link come about?

In 1989 I was working as an Outreach worker at the Sacred Heart Mission in St Kilda. Now St Kilda was pretty rough in those days; there was a lot of destructive behaviour about. A pattern I was seeing all the time was this: boredom leads to frustration; frustration leads to anger; anger leads to drug use; drug use leads to crime; and crime leads to prison. But I found that sport and recreation was a way of intervening on a different level – it was something that a good percentage of people responded to. Australian rules football, because it’s particularly powerful in the culture, reminded people of better times ­– even full-blown drug addicts would get involved, which was really interesting.

How can sport help? Does the team aspect encourage bonding? Is it the discipline of competition that’s most useful?

I think it’s the colour of it, the excitement of it, the looking forward to a game, the physicality, the adrenalin and the great bodily feelings it produces; the getting to know others. Excitement is important in people’s lives – real excitement. Doing a good pass, kicking a great goal – all that sort of stuff builds hope and it builds the spirit. Also, sport and recreation validates the work of welfare workers and support workers; they can build friendships and a positive high with the people they serve the needs of during the day.

Does RecLink receive support from professional organisations?

We do a lot with Cricket Victoria. We had two special days at the MCG, where we played a cricket match at lunch during the main Pura Cup game. Last year we did an AFL curtain raiser before a Hawthorn–Brisbane game and that was tremendous. We do a fair bit with Hawthorn Football Club, actually, as well as Footscray Football Club, Middle Park Bowling Club, and South Yarra Football Club. If you connect well with a sporting club, and they have an understanding of your people and your philosophy and what you’re trying to do, very often participants pick up work through the clubs: part-time painting or gardening, for example. That’s a very positive spin off. With the South Yarra footy club, we provide people for off-field roles – boundary umpires, goal umpires; people looking for something to do on the weekend. We provide infrastructure to the club, and our people get involved and end up becoming characters around the club.

I read in the papers where the Federal Government said something like, ‘Corporate Australia needs to be more responsible for homelessness rather than the government shouldering the burden’. Do you agree?

Well, I think a lot of welfare agencies would like to make a stronger push into this area if it was resourced for them in terms of worker availability or maybe program money. But I reckon it’s important it comes from the community generally; it’s not totally a governmental responsibility. It’s an issue a fraternity could take up, like the legal world – that’s something we’re trying to encourage at the moment. We get a certain amount of corporate sponsorship but not in droves, but what you’ve got to understand is that this isn’t a field that’s ever been resourced; it only exists largely by accident, as a result of a flow on of enthusiasm from the footy we played at Sacred Heart.

RecLink could just as easily not be there at all, but we’ve sort of hung in there and eventually got to a point where our Grand Final day is possibly one of Australia’s biggest days for disadvantaged people. In the end, our sporting events are flexible around the people we work with because we believe in the therapy of doing and the power of people looking forward to something. But in the wider community, sport and recreation’s probably undervalued in terms of what it can mean.

Sport does seem to be a big part of Australian culture, though.

Sure, there’s a lot of money spent on getting athletes to the Olympic Games, but not where it can have a real impact in the community and on the culture. Sport has such a powerful impact on the health of disadvantaged people, and it has a powerful role to play in crime prevention. For governments, that’s a whole sector of people that can be tapped into, who otherwise wouldn’t be playing sport if it wasn’t for this sort of structure.